Strategies toward Greater Youth Participation in Jordan’s Urban Policymaking

Abstract

Seventy percent of the population in Jordan is young and urban. A plethora of research demonstrated that collaborative urban policymaking would positively impact youth’s physiological and physical welfare as well as the quality of urban planning. Nevertheless, youth participation in Jordan’s urban planning is fragile, limited, and sporadic. Youth marginalization from urban policymaking would deter sustainable urban development. Therefore, this article examines the most convenient strategy to promote the inclusion of young Jordanians in the planning practice to be fully-fledged members of society. The fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) was employed to mathematically analyze the level of importance of each suggested strategy based on the opinions of eight experts with long experience in promoting youth participation in Jordan’s public policy. Research results reveal that adopting cutting-edge communication technology is the most suitable strategy to genuinely recognize youth input, opinions, and experience in urban policymaking.